6 Things Zombies Actually Eat

A closer reading of the literature proves the menu for your next zombie gathering is more complicated than just "brains."

1. HUMAN OFFAL

In the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, threatens to start a zombie apocalypse: raising the dead to eat the living. It’s the oldest reference to zombies in the world. It makes no mention of brains in particular.

2. LOCALLY SOURCED FLESH

Some say the Nachzehrer from German mythology is actually a vampire, but blood is not on its menu. Instead, after rising from the grave, the ghoul eats its own flesh. As the Nachzehrer feasts, its living relatives become sick.

3. PROTEIN SHAKES

The Draugr was the undead gym rat of Norse mythology. The rotting corpse roamed the countryside and swelled to enormous sizes to show off its strength. It passed the time haunting people and, we assume, eating whey protein by the fistful.

4. ASTRONAUT ICE CREAM

Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan, also wrote a sci-fi serial that features zombies ... in space. In Lost on Venus, a mad scientist named Skor steals blood from the living and uses it to revive the dead, who do his bidding. Brains weren’t part of their undead repertoire.

5. CORN AND PEAS

According to the world’s most gullible 12th-century historian, William of Newburgh, undead revenants terrorized medieval Europeans for decades. They were nicer across the pond. On All Souls’ Day, the Cochiti Pueblo people would leave corn, beans, peas, and watermelons in church for them.

6. FLESH (HOLD THE BRAINS)

Pop culture’s first true zombies didn’t eat brains. The script for Night of the Living Dead simply says they eat flesh. “I’ve never had a zombie eat a brain!” director George Romero told Vanity Fair in 2010. “I don’t know where that comes from. Who says zombies eat brains?”

People plagued with the uncomfortable thoughts and sensations characteristic of anxiety disorders may have a small group of cells in the brain to blame, according to a new study. As NPR reports, a team of researchers has identified a class of brain cells that regulates anxiety levels in mice.

The paper, published in the journal Neuron, is based on experiments conducted on a group of lab mice. As is the case with human brains, the hippocampus in mouse brains is associated with fear and anxiety. But until now, researchers didn't know which neurons in the hippocampus were responsible for feelings of worry and impending danger.

To pinpoint the cells at work, scientists from Columbia University, the University of California, San Francisco, and other institutions placed mice in a maze with routes leading to open areas. Mice tend to feel anxious in spacious environments, so researchers monitored activity in the hippocampus when they entered these parts of the maze. What the researchers saw was a specialized group of cells lighting up when the mice entered spaces meant to provoke anxiety.

To test if anxiety was really the driving factor behind the response, they next used a technique called optogenetics to control these cells. When they lowered the cells' activity, the mice seemed to relax and wanted to explore the maze. But as they powered the cells back up, the mice grew scared and didn't venture too far from where they were.

Anxiety is an evolutionary mechanism everyone experiences from time to time, but for a growing portion of the population, anxiety levels are debilitating. Generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder can stem from a combination of factors, but most experts agree that overactive brain chemistry plays a part. Previous studies have connected anxiety disorders to several parts of the brain, including the hippocampus, which governs memory as well as fear and worry.

By uncovering not just how the brain produces symptoms of anxiety but the individual cells behind them, scientists hope to get closer to a better treatment. There's more work to be done before that becomes a possibility. The anxiety cells in mice aren't necessarily a perfect indicator of which cells regulate anxiety in humans, and if a new treatment does eventually come from the discovery, it will be one of many options rather than a cure-all for every patient with the disorder.

For centuries, epilepsy was a source of mystery to scientists. Seizures were thought to be caused by everything from masturbation to demonic possession, and it wasn’t until the 1930s that a neurosurgeon showed the condition could sometimes be boiled down to specific spots in the brain. To do it, he had to open up patients’ heads and electrocute their brain tissue—while they were still conscious.

Wilder Penfield, the subject of today’s Google Doodle, was born on January 26, 1891 in Spokane, Washington. According to Vox, the Canadian-American doctor revolutionized the way we think about and treat epilepsy when he pioneered the Montreal Procedure. The operation required him to remove portions of the skulls of epilepsy sufferers to access their brains. He believed seizures were connected to small areas of brain tissue that were somehow damaged, and by removing the affected regions he could cure the epilepsy. His theory was based on the fact that people with epilepsy often experience “auras” before a seizure: vivid recollections of random scents, tastes, or thoughts.

To pinpoint the damaged brain tissue, he would have to locate the part of the brain tied to his patient’s aura. This meant that the patient would need to be awake to tell him when he struck upon the right sensation. Penfield stimulated the exposed brain tissue with an electrode, causing the patient to either feel numbness in certain limbs, experience certain smells, or recall certain memories depending on what part of the brain he touched. A local anesthetic reduced pain in the head; shocking the brain didn’t cause any pain because the organ doesn’t contain pain receptors.

During one of his surgeries, a patient famously cried, “I smell burnt toast!” That was the same scent that visited her before each seizure, and after Penfield removed the part of her brain associated with the sensation, her epilepsy went away.

Brain surgery isn’t a cure-all for every type of epilepsy, but treatments similar to the one Penfield developed are still used today. In some cases, as much as half of the brain is removed with positive results.